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  • Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University, c. 1100-1330 by Ian P. Wei
  • Thomas A. Fudge
Wei, Ian P. , Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University, c. 1100-1330, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012; hardback; pp. xiii, 446; R.R.P. £65.00; ISBN 9781107009691.

Peter Abelard spent a lot of time thinking about thinking, and Ian P. Wei has written an erudite book subjecting major themes of medieval theology to the same lens of examination. Intellectual and institutional histories do not form the core of Wei's study. Instead, he looks carefully at currents of thinking among theologians and examines these in terms of their specific context. Wei succeeds in showing the relevance of theology to such diverse considerations as sex and marriage, money, ethics, purgatory, and matters of law, and makes all of it compelling reading.

Medieval theologians generally tried to avoid doubt and hammered home their convictions about truth and those matters about which they could be intellectually certain. Abelard may have been the exception: his Sic et Non stands above the deceptive placidity of religious assurance in its desire for readers to experience the virtues of doubt. Questions were salutary, contradictions were no cause for lack of faith, and open-minded inquiry could lead to truth. Medieval theologians sometimes pretended they were on to new truths but in fact they were all too often rearranging previous understandings to suit new situations and provide answers for the questions of the next generation. While John of Salisbury may have been commenting on a specific matter, his general disgust at the lack of progress among theological thinkers has wider applicability, as Wei shows. Scientists strove for new discoveries, lawyers seized hold of new insights but theologians fiercely opposed challenges to established truths, rendering theology one of the rare disciplines to regard progress as a vice.

That said, it is nevertheless unfair to denigrate medieval theologians as backward, unenlightened, and obtuse. Abelard's mind was second to none. Aquinas towered above the intellectual landscape of the Middle Ages. [End Page 236] Bonaventure almost completely reconfigured human knowledge. Meister Eckhart was so intent upon the examined faith that he became impervious to contradiction. Wei makes no bones about bringing necessary nuance to uninformed and anachronistic charges that the theologians of Paris were misogynistic. He does not miss the subtlety of his subject nor does he fail to underscore that knowledge was not an osmotic possession of those taking holy orders. Herein lies one of the key contributions of the book. Abelard may have been the dragon, according to his arch-foe the abbot of Clairvaux, but he had a point when arguing that one had to acquire knowledge. If theologians insisted upon theologising, then consensus and conclusion would never be universally reached. This did not render theology impotent. Instead, it contributed to the energy and relevance of the discipline. Perhaps, as Wei convincingly demonstrates, one could obtain the knowledge of truth apart from revelation. Jean de Meun, Marguerite Porete, and Eckhart certainly thought so. Moreover, the business of doing theology in the Middle Ages also raised a crucial challenge to the entrenched idea that virtue was essential to knowledge and the former could be institutionally guaranteed. Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris provides ample evidence that virtue and knowledge had no definite relation.

Peter Lombard drew conclusions and his Sentences became the theological textbook of medieval Europe. Abelard praised the questions and contradictions and died in exile. Eckhart raised too many indefinite or troublesome perspectives and found himself stained with the label of heresy. Hugh of St Victor appears to have attained a synthesis from various means of learning, combining traditional approaches cultivated by the medieval schools and monasteries. Wei rightly warns of the peril of exaggerating the differences between these institutions. Conflicts remained, polemics raged, but theology flourished. Wei argues that Paris had few rivals in this respect and his assertion is difficult to refute. There remains, however, the deeper core of motivation among the theologians that Wei does not entirely explain. Why did these men devote so much time and energy to developing new arguments around various subjects when there already were unambiguous...

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